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Decoupling rural economies from agricultural support

Centre for Rural Economy researchers have recommended to government that rural economies are looked at outside of their relationship to agriculture.

Members of the CRE have recently contributed to the ongoing House of Lords enquiry into rural economy, highlighting the potential rural regions have in contributing to economic development.

A team of researchers from the centre submitted written evidence to the House of Lords Rural Economy Committee. CRE Professor Jeremy Phillipson also gave oral evidence at one of the committee’s recent session.

As CRE researcher Frances Rowe observes in a recent blog post, policy for rural economies is often caught between agricultural support on the one hand, and measures to encourage urban growth on the other.

Yet as the House of Lords enquiry has been learning, and as the CRE team points out, neither perspective is sufficient to unlock the potential of rural economies.

Thus, CRE team members have put forth a number of recommendations:

Policy support for rural economies should be decoupled from agriculture.

There should be a universal commitment to high speed broadband and mobile infrastructure for rural communities.

There must be a drive to more effective rural proofing, not only of national government policy but of sub-national policies and programmes.

Policy must be joined up across national and local government in order that structural barriers to rural growth can be tackled.